A Bluetooth (BT) communication unit may communicate with at least one BT device via an antenna.
The BT device may be power constrained having a limited power source configured to supply power for long periods. For example, the BT device may be a small sensor or a watch having a battery with limited power supply, and the BT communication unit may be included as part of a notebook or a Smartphone, which may be less power constrained.
To reduce the power consumption of the BT device, the BT device may utilize a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) scheme to communicate with the BT communication unit, e.g., as defined by the Bluetooth specifications.
According to the BLE scheme, a first BT device (“BT peripheral device”) may advertise over a BT communication channel a short transmit event, once in a relatively long time, to be detected by a second BT device (“BT central device”).
In some implementations, the BT central device may establish a connection with the peripheral BT device, e.g., upon detecting the short transmit event, to enable transferring data between the BT peripheral device and the BT central device.
In some implementations, the transmit event may include data transmitted from the BT peripheral device to the BT central device. In some of these implementations, there may be no need to establish a BT connection between the BT peripheral device and the BT central device. For example, the peripheral device may include a sensor, e.g., a temperature sensor, which may periodically transmit a transmit event including data measured by the sensor, e.g., a temperature measured by the temperature sensor, to the central device.
The BT central device should be capable of scanning one or more BT frequency channels, e.g., during long scan periods, to detect the short transmit events, in order to promptly detect the transmit events. Accordingly, the BT central device may be required to use the antenna for long detection periods.
The antenna may be shared with another communication unit. For example, the antenna may be shared with a Wireless-Fidelity (WIFI) communication device, e.g., according to a Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) scheme.